John Boehner comes out smoking

TAMPA, Fla. — John Boehner used to represent the harsh and uncompromising wing of the Republican Party. And then Paul Ryan came along.

Ryan makes Boehner look like a pussycat.

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The old saying was as long as you don’t worry about who gets the credit, you can get a lot done.

Ryan’s saying seems to be that as long as you make sure that nothing gets done, it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.

Which means that Congress continues to wallow in the “don’t just do something, stand there” mode, a mode that has earned it an approval rating so low — just 10 percent — that it is one step away from deportation.

Boehner is the speaker of the House of Representatives, which makes him second in the line of succession to the presidency and makes Democrats pray for the continued good health of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Paul Ryan is a Republican member of the House from Wisconsin and this week will be nominated as Mitt Romney’s running mate.

Ryan is the author of a budget plan that Democrats say would result in the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich in American history.

The plan would result in a dramatic change to Medicare, eventually turning it into a voucher system. So it is not being touted much during the Republican National Convention here in Florida, where the elderly like changes in Medicare about as much as they like butterfly ballots.

Republicans, therefore, speak of Medicare only in terms of how Obama is already ruining it more than Paul Ryan ever would. And Monday, Boehner broadened that line of attack to accuse Obama of making just about everything in America worse.

“He cut Medicare to pay for new entitlements,” Boehner said of Obama. “Gas prices? He made them worse. The political tone? He’s made it worse.”

Boehner was speaking at a Christian Science Monitor luncheon. I sat next to him and was able to confirm Obama’s joking description of him. Boehner, Obama said, is “a person of color, although not a color that appears in the natural world.”

If tanning were an Olympic sport, Boehner would qualify for a mahogany medal. As he sat down — he answered questions for 50 minutes and left his surf-and-turf untouched — the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafted from his clothes, a result of what is said to be a two-pack-a-day infatuation with Camel Ultra Lights.